


That Which Binds

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four people, four stories, one world, and one thread that binds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Binds

**Author's Note:**

> Written for general_jinjur

 

 

_You will begin, now, I think, to read those lines of...power, governance, sorcery, as I can read them._

______

_The Environmentalist_

I'd seen them out by the lake a few times, the young man and his sweetheart. Mostly in the later afternoon - well, that was the time I was usually up there myself. I'd decided they must have a house up there. Well, they struck me as a sensible couple and although the lake is usually safe there was that terrible incident a few months ago when that poor girl was snatched up around here. For a marvel she did manage to get away again, I remember hearing, so maybe it wasn't as terrible as all that. Still, you must take precautions.

And, yes, I know I'm up here myself at that time but I have a smart little car that saw me through the wars unscathed and besides there is a family of pine marten kits that have moved into old Amblecote cottage and dusk is the best time to observe them. 

The mother is one of those we reintroduced, and she has an electronic tag which makes tracking her nice and straightforward. (I do still show up on the new technology which is, I do confess, a little annoying, but one learns to live with these things.)

I was calling it an early day and tramping back down to my car - my wellies had sprung a leak and the new ones weren't broken in yet, so I suppose I wasn't watching where I was going adequately. Well, I'm afraid to say I barged straight through the bushes into the spot where they'd made a nice little love nest for themselves, cakes, thermos flasks and all. You'd have thought I was a ten foot tall Bragh demon the way that poor girl nearly shot out of her skin. 

(I suppose I'm an old romantic but I couldn't help but notice that they didn't let go of each others hands.)

"Oh! I'm so sorry my dear," I exclaimed. "I didn't mean to startle you."

She was a pretty little thing, although he was quite odd looking. Still, there was something quite charming about the pair of them and I couldn't help but smile fondly.

"Have you had a nice afternoon?" I asked them. The girl looked a little cornered as she stuttered out an affirmative, and I had to feel bad. _Sheena,_ I told myself sternly, _you must positively_ not _turn into a nosy old biddy._ It was clear I was interrupting something - dear me, back in the day I'd have said something quite rude to anyone interrupting one of _my_ little moments.

"Ah, I've been up here collecting some information myself," I told them, and dug my tracker out of my raincoat pocket to show them. 

The young woman's face had cleared somewhat. "You're a Super Green?"

I beamed at her. "Yes dear." We're really becoming a familiar sight again around the lake; the youngsters are swelling up our numbers again. Oh, that reminds me, I must remember to tell the gang about this when I visit the Church on Sunday. Imogen was always reading those soppy romance books - she'll love this. 

"You are being careful out here, aren't you?" I asked abruptly. "There was that story about the young woman who was snatched out here only a few months ago..."

The girl made an odd noise in the back of her throat, and this time her young man answered. "We have a house nearby."

"Good," I said firmly." You really must take care of yourselves, you young people. You're our most precious resources you know."

The young woman was getting a funny look on her face again - it must have been _quite_ a moment that I interrupted. 

"Why do you have a bag full of dandelion heads?" The young man asked suddenly. The girl's head whipped around to stare at him in consternation.

I'm afraid I rather beamed as I answered him. "Well, I make dandelion wine out of them." I bounced the satisfyingly full Superways' bag off my leg. That was one giant felled by the wars which I don't mourn. Still, they did make very good plastic bags which last for years if you keep them folded neatly. Good strong plastic, not like these flimsy bags they give you now that tear as soon as you look at them. 

Reading the vibes I was getting of the couple before me I didn't think they were in the mood for a lecture on plastic bags past and present. "It was lovely meeting the two of you," I told them. "But I must be getting off. I'll let the two of you get back to what you were doing." And I'm rather afraid I winked. 

"Look, we're not-" the girl began, and I waved my hand reassuringly as I headed off.

"Don't worry about I thing," I carolled cheerfully. "I won't breathe a word to another soul."

It was only a short walk back to my car and when I reached it I paused, as I always do.

When I stand and look out over the lake and I think of all the _life_ that returning to it, all the species that have been pulled back from extinction all over the world, my heart can't help but fill up with thankfulness. I think of all the others who worked so hard to accomplish this- Jane and Andy and Yoko, Waqar and Imogen. And I wish that they could be here to see this, oh I do. But the war which took their lives made all this possible.

Yet still, when I stand here, I can't help but be glad. Isn't that strange?

_______

_The Research Assistant_

Someone had made me coffee. 

I abandoned my calculations and wrapped my hands greedily around my mug and lifted it up so I could bury my nose in the steam. It had `Enigma' on it. My mug, that is, not my nose. 

"I did a supply run earlier," a familiar voice informed me, and I looked up quickly just as Jana dumped a pile of envelopes marked `secret' down on my crate. "New reports for you and Mother D," she told me, grinning down from under the brim of her fatigue cap. You could just see the remnants of her pre-War braids poking out from under it. 

I ducked my head quickly. "Thanks," I mumbled awkwardly, and peeled one of my hands off my mug to grab the first envelope and fish the wad of papers out. 

Jana propped her hip up against the crate-stack-that-is-my-desk and unslung her gun to rest it against the floor. I watched it nervously - well, who wouldn't when at least half the distant explosions you hear everyday are gunfire and bombs, not magic?

"Gods protect us but it's freezing in here," she said, shivering dramatically.

"The generators are still being used for other purposes," I told her, returning my eyes to the document I'd extracted. The papers were mismatched, and stapled roughly together. A brief, intense longing for glossy covers and soft bound journals hit me in the gut, and wasn't that such a stupid thing to miss? Out of a whole world?

"So, um, you were transferred back to guard duty?" I asked quickly. "Why did you get to deal with me?"

Jana grinned. "Some of those instruments Mother Durga's been wanting have finally come in," she informed me. "CO was hoping to get himself some brownie points by delivering them personally."

I had to smile. "When they came to the university to take her into protective custody she demanded to know how in the hells they expected her to do her work without at least the contents of her lab. So they packed it all up for her and, well." I shrugged. "I was in the lab at the time."

"Ouch," Jana said sympathetically. She peered over my shoulder. "So what is it I've brought you?"

"It's some more data from the SuperGreen vampires."

"Oooh." She suddenly looked more interested. "I heard about that. A group of Greenies tagged themselves with their own animal trackers in case they got nabbed, right?"

"Yes." I'd lain awake a night, thinking about that, after the first time I'd heard of it. There was a lot of things I'd lain awake thinking about. No. Think about the data. The data was safer. "The stop working quickly," I told Jana. I tell Jana a lot. She listens well. "But before they do we've been getting a lot of interesting readings. The - the movements we track - they don't have much relation to the way humans move in space."

"Huh," Jana said thoughtfully. 

"Um, yes." I scrubbed my hand in my hair. "That's what Mother Durga was working on, what I was doing my post-doc in before."

"Has that got something to do with why they've stopped us from using e-coms?"

"Yes. I mean, distance is weird in the Globenet, right? You can be close to someone on the other side of the world, but never encounter the person living next door to you on it. Professor Aziz thinks that might have some relation to the way vampires relate to the world. A lot of other people think that if we could understand that we would be able to crack their codes."

Jana had propped her cheek against her hand to listen better, her eye wide and fascinated. It made her look even younger. I think Jana probably lied about her age to some office who wasn't up to being picky. And that's a whole other set of issues, apart from the patently obvious ones, given the way I. Given.

"So that's what you're working on right now?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Constantly."

"Huh." She dropped her hand from her cheek and grinned at me, full on. "Well, I'll feel better for knowing that you're looking out for us out there, Eoin."

My stomach attempted to drop through the seat of my chair. "Yeah." I swallowed dryly, looking up at her. Oh god. "Um look, Jana. You know - you know that they tell you to start up a Post Office Box address? If - if I give you mine will you give me yours and." I swallowed again. "And keep in touch. After the Wars."

The bright, merry look fell off her face and I wanted to crawl inside a hole and pull it in after me.

I waited, twisting my fingers together anxiously under the table as she thought.

At last she nodded slowly. "Yeah." She looked up, and smiled. "After the war. We'll keep in touch."

________

_The Biker_

It was dusk coming on to full night when I finally passed the city limits of New Arcadia. The map I carried would have had me reaching the city in full daylight, but unmarked Bad Spots on the route in had forced me to make detours and slowed me down.

Only thing to miss about government work (or as much government as there had been during the Voodoo Wars) and that was access to the latest maps. I still pick up a few blinks reporting in the Spots I come across but you don't get the perks without being under contract, and I wasn't about to put my head in that noose. 

Nothing was making my tats itch as I cruised through the darkened streets. My oak felt like it wanted to put down roots, but then I had got it done only a few miles away from here. 

I picked the first house that felt right to squat for the night; lingering, tattered wards chimed gently when I pushed my bike in through the shattered door frame and settled it down for the night in the corner of what had been the living room. A few torn up sofa cushions gave me the best bed I'd seen in days.

I dreamt. And endless road, icy sleet slicing through my leathers, _things_ flickering in the darkness, in the corners of my eyes, with only the saving grace of speed to ward between us and them. A body clinging to my back, the wad of research notes he had paused to grab as the research bunker had collapsed around us pressed between his body and mine. 

I woke up, and the first thing my eyes fell on was my motorbike, resting quietly in the fractured sunlight streaming through a broken window. It looked good there. A good that had echoes, backwards _and_ forwards. Huh. 

I rubbed my hand over my eyes and went to see if there was any water to steal from the pipes outside. 

I didn't need to steal it in the end. A guy a few houses over spotted me and called me over, told me that he had just had his supplies reconnected and I was welcome to help myself. I wondered around the streets for a long while afterwards; in the daylight it is easier to see the building projects going on, the walls pieced back together, telephone cables rising again, this one small place being reclaimed. 

My oak is getting ideas.

___________

_The Baker_

So what does it say about you when you're social calendar is organised around a vampire?

I think the true measure of how messed up my life has become is that this is no longer a rhetorical question. I'd really like to know what it means that a few nights ago I was doing home improvements on a vampire's earth-place.

Alright, flat pack from Ikea isn't exactly top fashion choice but Yolande had offered to work some warding into the wood once she'd heard of the cause, and the charms had hummed happily against my fingers as I settled them into their new home so at least _they_ agreed with my definition of improvement. 

(Secondary question: what does it say about you when you start considering the feelings of objects? I suppose at least whatever the answer to that one I'm in good company. Once I'd told her about my project, and my promise to the charms left behind after Con gave me my necklace, she'd been really enthusiastic about the idea.)

Con had watched the whole proceedings expressionlessly. Big surprise. This particular non-expression had carried undertones of bemusement - maybe a globenet article on the nesting habits of human females. The baroque monstrosity of a cabinet had disappeared off into the outer darkness sometime soon after I'd finished the transfer, though. One day, million more to go.

Maybe I'd addict Con to the joys of minimalist Nordic flatpack.

Oddly, the times when we met up to, well. Train. (Like those Anglo-Saxon heroes, or characters in those Nihon cartoons Kenny has gotten addicted to oh god.) They're both easier and harder. Harder because I'm actually having to think about what I am, what all this training and strengthening might actually be leading to, and easier because, well. I don't stop with a cold flush and think; `I'm testing out Liquid Chocolate Death on a vampire.' (Charlie's has added a whole new range of hot chocolate drinks lately.) 

Even those moments are becoming fewer, though. That's the kind of thing I worry about when I get time, in between hand-holding sessions out by the lake as I try to get a better feel for how exactly I keep the sun off Con, and how long I can hold that, and lessons in how to read the lines of `power' and `governance.' 

But you do tend to be self-conscious of your-your _relationship_ with a vampire immediately after a woman crashes in on your picnic with said vampire and one of those lines starts thrumming between you and her. Especially when it's someone you don't ever remember meeting.

Social Anxiety in Human/Vampire Relations. Great globe-net headline.

I'd been picking up on the lines more and more now, since Con and I had started having our `mutual development' sessions. (Big business personal development training groups tried to take over Charlie's for their sessions once. Something about `ambience' and `story of place.' Mom chased them off by being more-scary-than-you at them. Some of the little corporate drones have escaped back to Charlie's since then and we've been re-educating them out of drone-dom.)

It's no where near as bad as the seeing-into-shadows thing. It's just a matter of choosing not to look at them, like switching between seeing the old lady and the young lady, or the faces and the candlestick. Or the vampire world map and the human one.

When I am looking for them they look more like scratches on clear plastic; depth rather than colour, and _in_ what I still like to think of as the real world rather than drawn on top of it. 

When Mel turned up for work this morning I could pick up my `bond' with him instantly; it was thrumming.

(It's also oddly like the one I have with Con, sort of steady. Settled. Not one that's going to be wiped out by one dramatic act. It's not as demanding as Con's and mine, Thankfully.)

There was another thrumming line leading off from Mel somewhere, which I guess ends up with the woman from the lake and that does make me twitch. Just how many people in the world am I bound to through the people I know personally?

Everyone who knows me knows I like my space, even if they only know it from over hearing the screaming matches between me and Mom over the subject. Twitch. Like I've got cobwebs in my hair. Giant ones.

But I'm even more careful about brushing cobwebs away now. I've developed even more sympathy for those little house spiders that die when put out into the big wide world. 

Even if my apartment has become even more of a haven of solitude, I don't think I'll be dusting down this giant cobweb I've discovered I'm a part of. 

 


End file.
